


Lonely is All We Are

by MsEllieJane



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Fluff, Michael Burnham/Ash Tyler if you squint, Pixie's Plot Bunnies, Prime!Lorca - Freeform, a bit of The OA vibe, cellmates, doing yoga in space prison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:20:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13554855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MsEllieJane/pseuds/MsEllieJane
Summary: Katrina's cellmate on the Ship of the Dead wears the same face as the man who sent her there...





	Lonely is All We Are

**Author's Note:**

> This idea comes from [Pixie's list of Admiral Kat Plot Bunnies](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/admiralkat/profile) and I couldn't resist the idea of Kat sharing a cell with a captured Prime!Lorca. It also holds up after Episode 12!
> 
> Story title from the song [Young Liars by TV on the Radio](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=edvw2o9byQ8)

“One.”

“Five.”

“Four,” he grunted, mid push-up.

“Seven,” she replied calmly, pivoting her feet and moving her arms to flow from Warrior 1 to Warrior 2. She kept her breaths even, but smiled slightly to see him try to concentrate. “I’m not throwing off your push-up count, am I?”

“No,” he snapped, and choked out a “three.”

“Eight,” was her reply as she bent her torso backwards and stretched her arm in Reverse Warrior. This seemed to distract him, because he faltered slightly and didn’t reply. As she gracefully moved back into position, she made eye contact and raised an eyebrow.

“Nine,” he said with a final grunt. “That’s 50 push-ups and no, I didn’t lose count”

“Excellent mental multi-tasking. Two, I win.”

“Dammit! I was distracted.”

“Sure you were, Gabriel. Mental tic-tac-toe just isn’t your game, admit it.” She grinned to herself as he shifted onto his back and started doing crunches.

She allowed herself a short glimpse at his torso before straightening her legs and bending into Triangle. He had lost a troubling amount of weight but the muscles she had memorised with her fingertips all those years ago were still there. She knew the distracted glances went both ways, particularly because the steamy temperature of the cell had them both stripping to their skivvies to exercise, but thus far neither of them had done more than look. She appreciated that restraint, knowing that feelings were still raw for both of them.

She stepped into Mountain Pose and then dropped into plank. She held the position until her arms started shaking and he glanced over at her, looking concerned. She folded into Child’s Pose, not wanting to look at him or press the matter further. The silences between them still held more meaning than speech, but she hoped that would change with time.

 

_She made a point of memorizing every detail she laid eyes on as she was escorted down the dimly lit corridor. She made note of each doorway, each panel, the attire of the guards, the faint smell of blood. The guards spoke in their unintelligible tongue and she didn’t bother trying to decipher it, instead making note of the warmth that seeped from the doorways they passed. When they finally reached their destination, one guard held her in place while the other unlocked the door. After shoving her into the room roughly, they slammed the door and walked away with a noise that sounded like laughter._

_She held herself as still as possible as she took in her surroundings. The room was larger than she would have presumed a prison cell would be. The warmth she sensed in the hallway was a slightly uncomfortable heat here, tempting her to remove her jacket. “Later,” she told herself. Once her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she realized that she wasn’t alone._

_On guard, with her hands in a defensive stance, she slowly approached the figure huddled in the corner. When he raised his head to look at her, she froze in horror._

_She tried to count each breath but they were drowned out by the rushing in her ears. He stood up quickly and approached her, speaking words she couldn’t quite make out. Adrenaline kicked in and her fight or flight instinct had her scrambling away, making unintelligible sounds akin to weeping._

_“No...no. You aren’t him,” she stuttered. “Who...how?” She didn’t want to break down in front of this man. She had remained stoic in front of the Klingons as they gunned down her security detail and manhandled her into this cell. She felt tears streaming down her face and scrubbed them away, taking deep breaths, willing herself into calm._

_“Kat! Please, Kat! It’s me, it’s really me.” The man who wore Gabriel’s face sounded desperate, his voice scratchy. He had an unkempt beard and his uniform was in tatters._

_“I just saw you, not two hours ago. We…” Her voice caught, as a certain realization crashed into her. She whispered a soft “noooo” and sat down carefully. She needed to put that horrific realization into a box and deal with it later. For now, she had to be pragmatic._

_“Who are you?” She asked simply._

_“You know who I am, Kat,” he said, sounding confused, bordering on panicked. “Gabriel Lorca, Captain of the Buran, service number 0013843. You know all that, Kat. What is going on, why are you here?”_

_“How long have you been aboard this vessel?” she asked, ignoring his questions._

_“To my best guess, between five and six months.”_

_She started at that, her mouth agape. She had no words so he continued._

_“Kat, they’ve just held me here, no one has spoken to me since I got here. I haven't been interrogated or tortured, just left here and given rations when they remember.” He scrubbed a hand across his face and through his beard. “I haven’t spoken to anyone for so long.”_

  


Before putting her shirt and trousers back on, she took a bit of disinfectant gel and rubbed it over as much of her skin as she could. It did a decent job of dissolving dirt without needing to be rinsed off, but left behind a sharp chemical smell. They used it sparingly, never knowing when they would get more from their captors. She hated the constant feeling of griminess the disinfectant couldn’t quite get rid of, but that was the reality of the situation. She craved a sonic shower and fresh uniform more than food at this point.

The combination of sweat and residual grime had left her hair a stringy mess so she had improvised a hair tie from a strip of fabric torn from her jacket. She never considered herself to be vain, but were she trapped with someone other than Gabriel, she probably would have been self-conscious about her appearance by now.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” he asked, his own clothing back in place. He didn’t bother with the disinfectant on most days, figuring it would make very little difference at this point.

“Breakfast, and then we work on the map.”

She had been going by the book since she’d arrived, following each page of the survival manual she had read and memorized years ago. _Keep to a schedule, keep your mind active, exercise regularly, don’t let your partner give up._ She could already see the difference in him. The defeated man she first encountered three weeks ago was starting to resemble the Starfleet Captain she used to know.

Long before her arrival, he had made the determination that he was being held as a hostage rather than a prisoner. There was no torture, no violence, nothing they had come to expect from the Klingons. The same continued after her arrival, deepening her suspicion that the double was working with the Klingons and perhaps made arrangements for her and Gabriel to be kept out of the way until they were needed as bargaining chips.

She went to the corner where they kept their meager stash of food and studied the half ration bar they had allocated for the day. She divided it in two, making his piece slightly larger, hoping he wouldn’t notice this discrepancy. She poured a small amount of water into each of the two cups they had been provided. No handles on them, of course, or he would have already fashioned them into weapons.

They both ate silently and slowly, concentrating on their food, avoiding distraction. There wasn’t much flavor to speak of so she focused on the sensations of chewing and swallowing. She knew she could trick her mind and body into feeling as though she had eaten more and had been working on this since she arrived. She had taught him the same technique and could see him struggling with it. When they had both finished eating, she reached out and squeezed his hand.

“Good,” she said quietly. Touch was still a fragile thing between them. They both craved it but feared it for their own reasons. Each time they held hands felt like a small triumph.

 

_He described his capture as though he barely remembered it. His shuttlecraft had been ambushed by a Klingon vessel and the pilot immediately shot in the head. He had been shackled with a bag over his head and shuffled from ship to ship for what felt like days. He wasn’t sure of how many times he had been transferred, his memories of that time a blind fog. The one memory that stood out, that he believe he had hallucinated, was his own voice in the distance._

_This had made her gasp in realization, but she waited for him to finish recounting his experience. He had been knocked unconscious, he wasn’t sure for how long, and had awoken in the cell. Since then, he had seen glimpses of guards through the bars in the door, but hadn’t seen another living being until her. Food and water were beamed in, just enough to keep him alive. At the beginning he tried to fight back, shouting at the guards who ignored him and trying to fashion a weapon out of nothing. He searched for an escape route, mapping his cell, memorizing each air vent and wall panel. He did all the things he was supposed to as a captured Starfleet Officer, but time eventually wore him down and he fell into despair._

_She could see it etched on his face, in the slump of his shoulders. It killed her to have to tell him what had happened in his absence._

_“The voice you heard, I don’t think it was a hallucination.” He looked up at her, confused but grateful for the sound of her voice. “I’m not sure how to describe this, but there is another you. A double for lack of a better term. He has been impersonating you the entire time you’ve been here.” He didn’t even seem surprised._

_“I suppose that’s why there hasn’t been any rescue attempt or hostage negotiation. I had been wondering about that and assumed I was just small potatoes and Starfleet had cut its losses and moved on.” The look on his face made her want to weep, but she held herself together._

_“He did well at first but then he made some....rash decisions.” She couldn’t tell him about the Buran yet. She would later, but she had to get this part out first._

_“The rest of Starfleet brass just thought he was a man hellbent on revenge, obsessed with defeating the Klingons. Someone twisted by war but still able to get the job done. I was the only one who saw that something was very wrong and I went to confront him on his ship.” Her mouth went dry and she didn’t specify which ship. Her heart started racing in anticipation of her next words._

_“I asked a few too many questions and he distracted me with scotch and smooth talk. I guess you could say he seduced me.” She gripped her hands together to stop them from shaking and she saw that his whole body was trembling._

_“I acted willingly, but not knowing that it wasn’t you. It was a violation, textbook rape by deception, and I had no idea until this moment.” He remained silent but the look on his face showed shock and anger mixed with a million other emotions. Tears began streaming down her face and she ignored them as she continued._

_“When he dozed off, I noticed scars on his back, old scars that I knew you didn't have. I tried to touch them and suddenly found myself flat on my back in a chokehold with a phaser pointed at my head. I confronted him, told him I could see past his lies, that I would take away his ship. He begged me to reconsider and I walked away. Twenty minutes later, thanks to his manipulations, I was voluntold by Starfleet Command for a diplomatic mission he must have known was an ambush. Perhaps he set the ambush up himself, it sounds like he’s been working with the Klingons the entire time.” She wiped the tears off and looked up at him._

_“Now I’m here.”_

 

The map was a project she devised to keep them focused on escape and keep their spirits up. She knew he had already tried similar plans and had given up, but she hoped that the added information she provided would lead them somewhere. He had been brought in blindfolded and unconscious but she had the opportunity to view and memorize as much as possible on her way in. She plumbed these brief memories for any and all information as they carved the map onto floor in a corner of the cell.

Their carving tool was her Admiral’s insignia badge, which she had surreptitiously hidden in her waistband before she was shackled by her captors. Gabriel had plans to fashion it into a weapon and would spend hours studying it. She took this as a good sign.

Another good sign was the change in her limbic system’s reaction to the sound of the badge being placed on the floor. The first time she heard it, she found herself shuddering, her heart racing in fear. She realized that her brain was linking the sound to the moment when she fell for the double’s charms and placed her badge on his table. Her solution was an impromptu round of exposure therapy in which she dropped the badge on the floor over and over again, until her body stopped reacting to it. She was pleased that it worked, that she was able to do something to help herself move forward while trapped here.

“There was a door here,” she says, pointing to a spot on the line that represented the next corridor over. “I could feel the heat seeping out from it, just like in here. I don’t know if it was another holding cell or something else. I got the sense that they keep all of the rooms at this temperature, not just ours.”

“I never knew Klingons were this fond of saunas,” he remarked while carving the symbol they were using to represent doors onto the map. “Have any new details surfaced today?”

“Not yet, but I’m still hopeful. Maybe I’ll remember something new during meditation.”

“Ugh, not more meditation.”

“Yes, more meditation. It’s helping both of us, I can tell.”

“If you say so, doc.” She wasn’t looking at him but could practically hear his eyes rolling.

Meditation was another thing she had added to their daily routine, much to his chagrin. She almost never made time for it since the war had started but here she had nothing but time. He turned down her offers to teach him at first, but eventually curiosity got the better of him and she led him through some guided meditations. She could see the tension leaving his body as she talked him through the progressive relaxation and it filled her with joy to see it. She knew she had to take whatever small moments of joy she could in this place, and this was a huge one.

When they had done all they could with the map for that day, she stood up and did some stretches. She felt his eyes on her as she moved and it brought her a sense of comfort rather than fear. She smiled at that.

 

_She kept her eyes shut when she told him about the Buran because she knew that she would break down completely if she looked at him._

_“No survivors?” His voice was barely a whisper._

_“Just...him,” she whispered back. “The story he gave made enough sense that Starfleet Command bought off on it. Yes, that does include me. I’m so sorry, Gabriel.” Her anger at herself grew, blooming under the rest of her despair._

_“I was just so relieved that you...he...I thought it was you, were still alive. He bullshitted his way through the psych evals so well that he was cleared for duty and handed the Discovery. Just like that. We were so fucking blind.”_

_She heard him quietly weeping and opened her eyes. He was hunched over, folded into himself and shaking. She pushed past the part of herself still horrified by the past 24 hours and crawled over to him, not trusting her legs to hold her upright. She gingerly put a hand on his shoulder and he moved into her touch, so she wrapped her arms around him. He rested his forehead on her shoulder and she held him, both of them sobbing helplessly. Her grief mingled with his and she could taste it’s bitterness.  
_

_“It isn’t your fault, Kat,” he whispered after what felt like an eternity._

_“How isn’t it? I know you better than anyone and he was able to fool me until it was too late.” She sighed and moved away from him. As much as she wanted to comfort him, she suddenly didn’t want to be touched, even by him. Especially by him. She settled at the other end of the cell, needing to be alone, or as alone as she could manage for now._

 

Their captors had provided them with two thin sleeping mats, the second one beamed in the same day Katrina had arrived. They provided little comfort but were better than sleeping on the bare metal floor. They had started off sleeping on opposite sides of the room, both of them lost in grief and craving solitude. Over time the mats inched closer and closer until they slept side by side, barely touching. The forced intimacy of their situation had left them with little to hide from each other and they both surrendered to that. At first they kept physical contact to a minimum, usually sleeping back to back. When they started waking up intertwined, bodies subconsciously moving together in sleep, they let go of the final walls between them.

They began to find comfort in touch and would spend hours holding each other silently, each lost in thought but anchored together. Despite the heat they clung together in sleep, battling against nightmares that came less frequently. The contact remained chaste for a time, both of them holding back, not wanting to cross the invisible line they had arbitrarily set. 

When she realized that she wanted to cross that line, she had a question for him. A test, more for herself than for him.

“Do you remember the night we watched the Perseids meteor shower?” They had just awoken and she felt a telltale hardness against her back as he spooned her. This had been happening for a while and she had been too polite to mention it previously, assuming a silent understanding between them. Now she was tired of being polite.

“Of course,” he said sleepily, his breath tickling the back of her neck. At this point, they were far beyond the point of being self conscious about morning breath and sometimes the phrase ‘like an old, married couple’ crossed her thoughts. He paused for a moment and for a split second, a cold feeling of dread began to bloom in her belly. Then she realized that he had just dozed off again. She elbowed him.

“What?? I’m still sleeping here, Kat.”

“The Perseids meteor shower, do you remember it?” He caught the slight edge in her voice and woke up quickly, realizing that this was something important.

“Yes, I remember it, it was a pretty fantastic night.” He moved his arm around her and hugged her closer, whispering in her ear. “We killed that bottle of scotch and made up new constellations. I believe you named yours ‘Gabriel, the pompous asshole’ and I picked ‘Katrina, the stuck-up know-it-all’. Sadly, neither of these celestial bodies made it into any official records.” She smiled at that and moved closer to him, wriggling slightly and eliciting a sharp exhale against her ear.

“I also remember, quite vividly in fact, that it was the first time we fucked. And the second time. Almost the third time, but the sun had come up by then and we had to get back to class. We had a lot of stamina back then, unlike the sad shape we’re both in now.”

“Hey, speak for yourself,” she chided, turning in his arms to face him.

“Why that memory in particular? Why now?” Before responding, she touched a hand to his bearded face, gently stroking it and earning her another sharp exhale.

“I just needed to be sure,” she said, and kissed him lightly. She drew back and he smiled at her, giving her shoulder a reassuring squeeze.

“I’m your Gabriel, always will be,” he promised, and kissed her back.

 

_Burnham looked at the readout on her scanner and was slightly shocked. “I’m reading two human lifesigns on the ship and they aren’t far from where we have to place the second sensor.”_

_Tyler seemed reluctant to detour from their mission but Michael was insistent that they not leave anyone behind. They made their way to a corridor of holding cells and she could hear Tyler’s breath speeding up, becoming frantic. She realized that he was all too familiar with a hallway such as this. She put a steadying hand on his shoulder and looked into his eyes, trying to get him to focus on her and not the space around them._

_“Stay with me Ash,” she murmured and he nodded. When she was satisfied that he was calm enough to continue, she gestured for him to follow her to one of the cell doors. She could hear muffled noises coming from inside and hurried to disable the locking mechanism. After a few unsuccessful tries, Tyler stepped forward and slashed the power cables, disabling the lock._

_“7 months on a Klingon prison ship,” he offered, shrugging. She put that piece of information aside for later and pushed on the heavy door. The sight that greeted them baffled her for a split second until her brain processed what the two human lifesigns were doing. She let out a reflexive yelp, quickly averting her gaze._

_“Seriously?? Of all times, you had to pick right now??” Michael recognized the annoyed voice and a quick glance back at the woman who was hurriedly throwing her clothes on confirmed it was Admiral Cornwell. The man sitting next to her in stunned silence was eerily familiar._

_“Hurry up Gabriel, we’re being rescued. Put your damn pants on!”_

_“Captain?” As soon as Tyler spoke it, Burnham realized exactly who the bearded man scrambling to put his clothes on was. Or appeared to be. She had seen Captain Lorca 20 minutes ago and was fairly certain he didn’t have a twin brother. The bizarreness of the situation left her dumbstruck._

_“I know this must be very confusing for you both, but we will answer all of your questions once we get to safety.” The Admiral zipped her jacket and gave them an exasperated look. “Could one of you please state your mission?”_

_“Right, sorry ma’am,” she shook off the momentary freeze. “Captain Lorca dispatched us to install sensors aboard this ship so that we can break the Klingon cloak.”_

_“Good, we’re coming with you.”_

_“We are? We don’t have weapons, Kat. Or shoes.” The bearded man looked reluctant and slightly frightened._

_Michael gave into to weirdness of the situation and decided to play along. She silently handed her backup phaser to the Admiral and Tyler passed his to the Lorca-like man. “I’m afraid we don’t have any extra shoes, ma’am.”_

_“That’s fine, we’ll manage.” She looked back at the bearded man and took his hand. “Let’s kill these bastards and go home.” He nodded and followed her out the door._

_“Killing them isn’t actually the mission,” Burnham called, but there was no response. She exchanged a look with Tyler who shrugged and started walking after them._

_She looked quickly around the cell, noticing the scattered items around the room. She spotted the Admiral’s insignia pin on the floor and quickly grabbed it, shoving it into her pocket. After one last sweep of the room, she dashed into the hallway and headed after the strangest mission party she had ever been part of._


End file.
